Monte Carlo sphere model for effective oxide thinning induced extrinsic breakdown

Abstract

The Monte Carlo sphere model is extended to deal with the extrinsic time-dependent-dielectric-breakdown (TCDB) by incorporating the well-known "effective oxide thinning" concept. Percolation simulation, based on this model for the first time, evidences that the process defects induced extrinsic TDDB is also statistical in nature as is the intrinsic one, and is characterized by a probability function defining local oxide thinning. The experimental bimodal or even multimodal characteristics can be reproduced accordingly. Furthermore, the simulation results in the extrinsic regime are found to be sample-size (i.e., the total number of samples that span the breakdown statistics) dependent, suggesting that care should be taken when evaluating the extrinsic TDDB data in a real manufacturing process.